Software and firmware data for Nvidia LHR (Lite Hash Rate) GPUs could soon be leaked online if Nvidia does not comply with the demands of the South American hacking group Lapsus€.
Details of the group's plan to leak company-owned data were first shared on its Telegram channel, and if the data turns out to be genuine, it could prevent graphics cards from falling in price as they could be used again. to mine Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. .
Although the data itself has yet to be verified, Lapsus€ has already announced the sale of information that could allow cryptocurrency miners to bypass Nvidia's LHR that is implemented in GPUs with its GA102 and GA104 chips.
If the information stored in Nvidia's stolen 1TB of data really allows users to bypass LHR, the full power of the RTX 3060 up to the RTX 3090 could be used to mine cryptocurrency. Even if this were the case, Ethereum's next move to Proof-of-Stake (known as The Merge) would give miners little time to recoup their investment in Nvidia GPUs.
LHR Restrictor Removal Request
In addition to threatening to release the company's proprietary data, including schematics, drivers, firmware, documentation, proprietary tools, and SDKs (software development kits), Lapsus€ also required Nvidia to remove the LHR limiter.
If the company complies with this request, the group has pledged not to leak or distribute a "HW file" of stolen data. However, it seems strange that Lapsus€ would ask Nvidia to remove the LHR limiter on its recent GPUs when the group claims to have all the necessary software to do it on its own.
Lapsus€ also claims to have obtained "everything about Falcon" from the company. For those unfamiliar, Falcon is a special class of microcontroller that ships inside all of Nvidia's GPUs and handles a variety of functions from video decoding to memory copying to security.
Although Nvidia has not yet contacted Lapsus€, sources who have access to the stolen data say it matches the group's claims. For its part, Nvidia would have tried to hack the group itself by deploying ransomware aimed at preventing the leak of their stolen data. Unfortunately, Lapsus€ had already backed up the data before the attack.
We'll have to wait and see if Lapsus€ decides to release the stolen data, but in the meantime, Nvidia is investigating the incident, similar to the recent cyberattack that reportedly took part of its business offline.
Through Tom's Hardware